Related Stories

It’s not unusual to have a municipal council comprising an A-Team and B-Team.

And it’s not a bad way to run a city either, says Brock University political science professor David Siegel.

“That terminology — A-Team and B-Team — I’ve heard that used in a number of other jurisdictions,” said Siegel, an expert on municipal politics. “It’s not unusual to see a split like this occur.”

That terminology is also often used by readers of The Tribune’s website when commenting on Welland city council stories.

“It’s important that issues get discussed and all sides of an issue get discussed. It’s probably better to have some level of division rather than to have people kind of blindly following,” Siegel said. “That’s probably a worse situation.”

The scenario of a council that tends to agree with everything can lead to bad decisions, “because everyone gets stampeded in one direction,” he said.

Siegel said he’d be more concerned if city council regularly voted 13-0.

In Welland city council’s case, he said, “people are really obligated to make their case because presumably it’s not automatic that everyone’s going to be onside if you don’t make your case in a particular situation.”

“Each side does have to be able to make its case in order to keep people in line because, presumably, people will cross the line every once in a while if they feel that someone just doesn’t have a very good case.”

A split council can, however, lead to problems when there is “an absolute stalemate and you can’t do anything,” he added.

Siegel said Niagara Region council faced a similar stalemate in the spring of 2011 when trying to decide on a new Niagara Regional Police headquarters.

“That coloured so many things that it made it difficult for the region to do anything, because it really muddied the water,” he recalled.

But occasionally, when debates become “nasty and personal,” Siegel said “that’s never good.”

“That’s unfortunate when that occurs because councillors are probably not focusing on issues the way they should be.”

When that happens, Mayor Barry Sharpe doesn’t hesitate to make sure discussion stays on track.

“Someone needs to calm things down,” Siegel said. “Someone needs to get people talking about issues and get away from any personal attacks.”